Period 5: Sectional Crisis, Civil War, and Reconstruction, 1844–1877
Sectional crisis
The Mexican Cession forced the slavery question into national politics. The Compromise of 1850 admitted California free and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, which radicalized northerners. Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), Bleeding Kansas, and the Dred Scott decision (1857) eroded compromise. Dred Scott held that Congress could not bar slavery in territories and that Black people could not be citizens. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid, and the 1860 election split the Democratic Party and prompted secession.
Civil War and Reconstruction
The war began at Fort Sumter. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) freed enslaved people in rebel territory, not border states, and made emancipation a war aim. Gettysburg and Vicksburg turned the tide. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery; the Fourteenth established birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection; the Fifteenth protected Black male suffrage. Radical Reconstruction imposed military districts and the Freedmen's Bureau, while Black Codes and later Jim Crow sought to restore racial control. The Compromise of 1877 withdrew federal troops and ended Reconstruction.
Traps: the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all enslaved people; the Thirteenth did. The Fourteenth's equal protection clause was not enforced for decades (Plessy, 1896). The Fifteenth did not guarantee the vote to women or to all men in practice. Reconstruction ended in 1877, not 1865.
Worked example: if asked why Radical Reconstruction failed, connect federal retreat, Supreme Court narrowing, paramilitary violence, and northern fatigue-not just racism in the South.
Rule of thumb: distinguish war aims from war results-emancipation was gradual, contingent, and completed by amendment.